Hindu win tipped in state poll

India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is heading for victory in strife-torn Gujarat in a state election seen as a referendum on its hardline Hindu nationalist policies.

Television exit polls gave Chief Minister Narendra Modi's party, widely blamed for inciting massacres of Muslims in the recent Hindu-Muslim clashes, a comfortable majority in the 182-member state legislature.

Final results of the election that will have a profound influence on the future of Indian politics will be out tomorrow. The BJP's main rival, the Congress party, was poised to be the second largest party, improving its performance marginally over the 53 assembly seats it presently holds, the polls indicated.

Gujarat's voters cast their ballot under tight security following three months of sectarian rioting that ended in May in which more than 1000 people, mostly Muslims, died.

Violence was triggered on February 27, after a group alleged to be Muslims set fire to a train carrying 58 Hindu pilgrims, including women and children, in the state.");document.write("

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In some areas, people lined up hours before polling began and by noon about 25 per cent of the state's 32.8 million registered electors had voted.

More than 110,000 paramilitary and state police personnel were deployed to prevent trouble after an election campaign in which the BJP promised to establish Hindutva, or Hindu rule, if elected.

It portrayed Muslims as the enemy and a bulwark against prosperity and Gujarati enterprise. Muslims, who were the main victims of the religious clashes, turned out in large numbers to vote against the BJP, whom they hold responsible for the pogrom unleashed against them.

The Election Commission had made special voting arrangements for hundreds of Muslims who, out of fear, have been unable to return to their homes.

There have been some reports of voters returning to houses that had been burned down while they attended polling stations.

The National Human Rights Commission and independent non-governmental organisations have blamed Mr Modi's administration for "sponsoring" the rioting.

"We want the BJP out at all costs to bring about some communal harmony," Nasim Banu, a housewife, said in the Shehar Kotla area of Ahmedabad, Gujarat's largest city and financial capital that bore the brunt of the rioting. She said she had voted Congress at a heavily guarded polling station in a neighbourhood where Hindus and Muslims live side by side but are now highly distrustful of each other.

In the Muslim majority area of Ahmedabad, Dariapur, a maze of narrow alleys through which Hindu mobs rampaged, burning homes and businesses earlier this year, polling stations were tightly packed and the atmosphere charged with anticipation.